Rotarians building sandcastles ... you bet

The inaugural St Heliers Sandcastle Competition was held last Saturday 23 March 2013 and the Rotary Club of St Johns was there!

A very credible result!

This competition replaced the St Heliers Festival of previous years and instead of community stands up the main drag, the stands this year were along the waterfront and St Johns Rotary was again there to promote both the club and Rotary and ShelterBox.  As in previous years, the ShelterBox display dragged in the families and provided the perfect opportunity to talk to them about Rotary and Beryl now has a list of names to spin her charm on and try and get some along to the club!

Clearly the Rotarians needed a helping hand from more
experienced sandcastle builders

The members, including some of our newer members looked after the stand throughout the day but for some the lure of actually taking part in the sandcastle building was far too great ... maybe it brought back memories? ... under the guise of promoting Rotary of course.

New member Anne and Andy at the stand
(not showing are the tear drops and the pull up banners)

This was another great day in the sun at the seaside and all enjoyed themselves.


Low Down

The display had the usual:

Green was the colour, fun was the activity!

Not sure that the rain Gods were invited but they came anyway, along with 27 other happy "Irish" St Johns rotarians. All were dressed in something green.

There was even green cocktails to start the afternoon off, followed by yummy food delightfully prepared by Marg and her two helpers Ali, & Jilly.

Through out the afternoon there Irish music playing (not that you could hear it above the talking) and many Irish Paddy jokes enjoyed.

Many did say it was an earth moving Rotary event, particularly as we all felt the earthquake (except Peter & Patrick)

The pictures tell the story ... it was fun!

Telling the Varayame Story

The story begins when Sarah Graham was holidaying in Fiji and came to meet a teenage Fijian boy, Varayame, confined to a wheel chair since a very young age. Having been denied proper medical treatment for a open wound in his lower back, he eventually lost the use of his legs and developed club feet.   Sarah, a student studying documentary making at the South Pacific Film School, made the decision there and then she would do all she could to help this unfortunate soul.   She returned to New Zealand and galvanised the help of ROMAC, St Johns Rotary, Parnell Rotary and a number of specialist surgeons to perform corrective surgery on Varayame.                                                  

 

She was passionate about making a documentary of the entire story and managed to convince our guest speaker, PAULA JONES of the film school, to allow her to undertake the venture.   The school broke all the rules and gave permission for Sarah to travel to Fiji to begin filming, and this is when Paula became involved.  They encountered enormous political barriers to do the filming, but won through in the end. Sarah clocked up 240 hours of film on a Canon 5D camera. This camera did not possess audio capability so this all had to be synchronised in afterwards. An enormous task that would take many, many days to accomplish.                                              

 

Finance was a problem to begin with, however TV NZ came to the party and decided to adopt the doco., provided there was a professional director appointed to oversee the project.   This came to pass and work began in earnest. Filming was completed by the end of 2011 and then went to processing.    Paula described in great detail the technical processes involved in producing the film, including the difficulties encountered in the synchronising the audio, transcribing 250 hours of filming from three languages, English, Fijian and Indian. All to produce 1 hour of documentary.    Production has been held up by other events such as the London Olympics and other priorities.                                                                                       

 

No screening date has as yet been set.  The doco will screen on TV and at film festivals around the world.  

Latest news on Varayame is that he is enrolled in a course at the Fiji Vocational & Technical Training Centre For Persons With Disabilities (FVTTCPD) He's been chosen for the disabled games in Brisbane and is training.    He is looking forward to doing his best in the games.

 

The Great Car Rally

Organised by Michelle and Eddie a whole bunch of members and partners departed for places unknown (at that point at least).  The directions had many surprises with many twist and turns but fortunately not too many false starts or wrong turns taken.  The sights were amazing and included a regional park or two.

A fantastic time was had by all and this definately must become a regular feature of the club's social calendar.